The People of Palestine by Elihu Grant

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Title: The People of Palestine
An enlarged edition of "The Peasantry of Palestine, Life,
Manners and Customs of the Village"

Author: Elihu Grant

Release Date: March 24, 2020 [EBook #61662]

Language: English

Character set encoding: UTF-8

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A SILOAM WOMAN, HER INFANT ON HER BACK AND

PRODUCE ON HER HEAD

BIBLE LANDS AND PEOPLES—MODERN

BEING A COMPANION VOLUME TO “THE ORIENT IN BIBLE TIMES”

THE PEOPLE
OF PALESTINE

AN ENLARGED EDITION OF

“THE PEASANTRY OF PALESTINE, LIFE,

MANNERS AND CUSTOMS OF THE VILLAGE”

BY

ELIHU GRANT

PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE IN HAVERFORD COLLEGE

ILLUSTRATED

PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY ELIHU GRANT

COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS

PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.

TO THE MEMORY OF

HINCKLEY GILBERT MITCHELL

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

We thought that Palestine had passed into ancient history, but it has been a centre of modern events. No country in the

world has a more continuously interesting and profitable story. Its present population is made of sturdy and able people.
Three great religions call it Holy Land. It presents to view three distinct types of human society, the desert nomad who
dwells in the tented encampment, the peasant villager who reminds us in so many ways of the people of the Bible, and the
more foreign looking and mingled folk of the large cities.

We have picked the village life as most suggestive of the quaint customs of the past. It has been gratifying to have those

who know this life best, including villagers themselves, praise the accuracy and sympathy of the descriptions.

The volume has not been compiled from books, but drawn from life. An additional chapter seeks to sum present

conditions.

Life has changed even in the East but much remained in Palestine, especially under the Turkish régime, that is suggestive

of Bible Times. We trust that we have provided here a cross-section of a most interesting period. We hope for even more,
that the reader with dramatic imagination may be able to fill the places and figures of the biblical past with life.

E. G.

Haverford, Pa.,
February 24, 1921.

A few words that are pretty well fixed in popular usage, as Beirut, Jaffa, Jerusalem, etc., are not changed in spelling, but

for most Arabic words the following alphabet has been used in transliteration:

—
r
gh
y

b
z
f
a

t
s
ḳ
u

th
sh
k
i

j
ṣ
l
â

ḥ
ḍ
m
û

kh
ṭ
n
î

d
ḍh or ẓ
h

dh

w

The use of y final and of ô as aids to pronunciation will be of obvious import. When a foreign word occurs in the book for
the first time it is put in italics.

CONTENTS

Chapter I

Introductory. Remarks on the country of Western Palestine: historical, topographical and

geological; distances, levels, rock composition, hills, valleys, caves, soil, etc. The waters: rivers,
lakes, the watershed, the Shephelah, ponds, springs, cisterns, reservoirs and pools. The
seasons: wet and dry, the rainfall, sun, drought, the weather according to the months, effect on
health and on food supply, harvest. The winds. Flora: trees and flowers. Fauna: wild animals,
birds. Scenery: appearance of cities and villages in Palestine. Sites, buildings, gardens, roads,
paths, wilderness, agricultural matters, ripening fruit, vineyards, care of the soil, walls, watch-
towers, terraces, orchards, olives, figs, pomegranates, etc.

Page 11.

Chapter II

General characteristics of the population of Palestine. The Bedawîn or nomads. The village

and its people. Moslems and Christians: their distribution, their mutual relations. Description of
the peasant man and the peasant woman.

Page 43.

Chapter III

Village Life. Introductory. The tribe: how constituted, its fellowship and significance. The

family within the tribe. Importance of a strong family. Marriage in family and tribe: marriage
settlement, qualities of a good wife, customs and ceremonies preliminary to marriage, wedding
festivities and the celebration. The status of the new wife. An anomalous state of affairs. A
disappointed lover. Children: boyhood and girlhood, importance of sons, birth, announcing the
newly-born, naming the child. The midwife, care of babies, attention to children in health and in
sickness, clothing, growing up, play, amusements and work, training. Family and personal
names.

Page 51.

Chapter IV

Village Life. The houses of the peasants: structure, arrangement, conveniences, utensils and

furnishings. Foods: their preparation and storing, eating customs. Costumes; male attire, female
attire. Household industry: division of labor between members, women’s work, house, oven,
field and wilderness. Health data: poverty and superstition as foes to health, treatment of the
sick, common ailments, diseases, hospitals and medical assistance. The dumb and the blind.
Treatment of the insane, the leprous. Death, mourning, burial, graves. The cholera and its
ravages in Palestine in 1902, attendant evils, famine and quarantines.

Page 75.

Chapter V

Village Life. Religion. The religious basis of the peasant life. Country shrines venerated by

the peasantry, saints, tombs, lamps, ruined churches, mosks, reverence for patriarchs and
prophets, sacred trees. Superstitions concerning localities, minor superstitions, hair, doorways,
food, evil eye. Prayer of women. Fatalism. Moslem prayer. Neby Mûsâ procession. Ramaḍân,
Bairam. Eastern and Western Churches, organization, priesthood. Fasts, feasts, proselyting.
The Samaritans and their Passover.

Page 110.

Chapter VI

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8

Village Life. Business. The Palestine peasant as a worker. Farming the first business of the

village. The transition from the life of the nomad to the life of the peasant. Fellaḥîn. Land
holdings and titles. Farming rights. Crops and sowing, work animals and their management,
care of the standing crops, tares, mists, simultaneous reapings, harvest-time, threshing and
cleaning. Grape season, vineyard districts, use of the fruit, raisins, export trade in raisins, care
of vineyards, watch-towers in vineyards and orchards. The olive crop and its care. Flocks of
sheep and goats, the young, varieties, the shepherd. The wool business and kindred industries,
spinning and weaving. Undeveloped agricultural possibilities. The village market, shops, stores,
bargaining and trade customs, measures and weights, currency, accounts, money-lending,
village crier, the go-between, the shaykhs in business capacity. Transport and travel in the
country, roads and vehicles. Stone and building trades, the materials and the tools.
Miscellaneous trades, peasants in the city for business or for hire, dealers in antiquities and their
ways.

Page 130.

Chapter VII

Village Life. Social privileges and customs. The elements that contribute to these, kinship,

religious association, party traditions, proximity. Predominance of kinship as a factor. The
influence of religion as a factor. Diversions of the peasant, conversation and the amenities,
calling and calls. Greetings, salutations, colloquial address, business talk and discussion. Guest-
house and its uses, coffee-making, food for guests. A roofing-bee. Play, games, celebrations.
Hunting. Gipsies. Quarrels as an anti-social and social factor. Revenge, etc.

Page 158.

Chapter VIII

Village Life. Intellectual matters. The state of learning, revival, services of the press in the

Levant. Education, schools, missionary influence. Languages heard in the country, native and
foreign. The peasant’s pride in his mother tongue. The Arabic language, its beauty and
symmetry, literature, dialects, idioms, colloquialisms, exclamatory remarks, gestures, curses,
proverbs.

Page 170.

Chapter IX

Village life in the concrete. Description of actual villages, Râm Allâh and el-Bîreh.
Page 187.

Chapter X

Village life in the concrete, continued, with some village environs. Eṭ-Ṭîreh, Khullet el-‛Adas,

‛Ayn ‛Arîk, Kefr Shiyân, ‛Ayn Ṣôba, Baytîn, Khurbet el-Moḳâtîr, Dayr Dîwân, eṭ-Ṭayyibeh,
Jifnâ, ‛Ayn Sînyâ, Bîr ez-Zayt, ‛Âbûd, Mukhmâs.

Page 213.

Chapter XI

The village in its external relations. Attitude of villagers to the city and city people, now and

formerly. Administration of the village from the city. The peasant and the government, taxes,
private and official settlement of disputes. Postal service, native and foreign, telegraph. Passage
of news and rumor. Travel, hindrances, quarantines, coastwise shipping, railway travel, peasant
travel, pilgrimage travel, Russian pilgrims and the peasantry, other European pilgrim parties,
tourists, traveling passes, transference of parcels, baggage, money, banking, consular service,
the desire of the natives to emigrate.

Page 225.

Chapter XII

9

Recent events. Effects of the revolution. Syrians and the World War. Syrian ability. Schools

and education. The new administration; certain functions and methods. Archæological interests.
The Arabian problem. Arabia and its people, social customs, politics, poets, prophet and
religion.

Page 242.

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

A Siloam Woman, Her Infant on Her Back and Produce on Her Head
Frontispiece

River Auja of Jaffa
20

Donkey at the Threshing Floor With a Load of Wheat
28

Wild Anemones From Wady El-Kelb
32

A Vineyard at Râm Allâh
36

Râm Allâh Man and a Basket of Olives
38

Stretch of Olive Trees on Road to Ayn Sînyâ
38

A Bedawy House
42

Bedawy Drinking
42

Peasants on Way to Market With Produce
44

Bedawin Horseman
44

Woman’s Work
48

Bringing Home the Bridal Trousseau
54

Girls at Play Carrying Headloads of Grass in Imitation of the Women
54

Washing a Child
58

A Swaddled Infant
58

Three Kinds of Houses—Mud, Dry-Stone, Stone-and-Mortar
68

Household Utensils
76

Bread-Making Utensils
82

In a Dooryard. Women Cleaning Wheat
94

On Top of an Oven. Women Sifting Wheat
94

Pottery
114

On the Way to Jerusalem. For the Neby Musa Procession
126

A Neby Musa Contingent Arriving Within the Jaffa Gate, Jerusalem
126

Farming Implements
130

A Sower
132

Children Gleaning
132

Threshing
140

A Threshing Scene in the Old Pool at Bethel
140

1. Hand Spinning 2. Reeling 3. Straightening Threads For Loom
142

Various Articles Made of Skin: Bottles, Bags, Pouches and Buckets
150

A Market Scene: Peasantry Near David’s Tower, Jerusalem
154

Women at the Spring
164

Fountain at Nazareth
164

A House-Roofing Bee (Et Tayyibeh)
172

A Râm Allâh Matron at Her own door
187

Camel Carrying a Rope Net Filled With Clay Jars
194

Râm Allâh, as Entered by the Sinuous, Walled Lane From the East
194

Little Girls of the Village
196

The Village of Râm Allâh and Outlying Vineyards
204

El-Bireh (From the South)
212

Vineyards and Stone Watch Towers
220

Peasant Plowing
220

Primitive Rug Weaving (Bedawin)
230

Straw Mat and Basket Making: Jifna Woman
230

The PEASANTRY of
PALESTINE

11

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY. THE COUNTRY OF WESTERN PALESTINE. GENERAL FEATURES

This little book will make no attempt to tell all that could be said of its subject, but we hope that its selection of things to

tell will be gratifying to you. Our wish is that not many of its pages may be condemned as dry, but that most of them may
have interest and refreshment. If sometime when you are tired you can sit down and be pleased with some of these pages,
here or there, you will know a little of how the trudging peasant of the village feels as, going over hill after hill, from each
top he gazes off towards the west and sees the evening mists thickening and looking like good, cool mountains in the sea. It
is pleasant to see the face of the native light up as he catches sight of the clouds heavy with blessings of moisture. Perhaps
fierce sirocco days have followed one another for some time, longer than usual. Such days are usually looked for in trios at
least, but often they hold for a longer time. Their peculiarly enervating heat is very trying, and when they have passed one
welcomes eagerly an evening that brings the heavy mist. This announces that the succession of hot days is broken and that
some days of respite are coming. The welcome moisture blesses the vineyards, the fig orchards, the tomatoes, squashes
and melons, and it is sure to bring out ejaculations of blessing from the fervent peasant, praising the Father of all, whose
favoring mercy he feels.

Look out on a morning early and you will see the mists[1] scudding, drifting, veiling and dissevering like masses of gauze,

like streamers of truant hair. Perhaps some near mountain may be cut off from the little hill half-way down by a moat filled
with billowing fog. Soon the sun cuts it and scatters it away and the hot, dry day sets in. The roads and rocks are
powdered with lime dust, the somber morning tones on the hills are touched with whitening brightness. Here and there is
the dusty gray of an olive-orchard or the bright green of vineyards. Overhead, the brightest blue is set with one yellow gem
of fire that creeps up and up until noon, and then the toiling peasantry, who have watched this timepiece of the heavens, sit
down in the nearest shade to eat their food and chat. That done, they roll over for the luxury of a nap and forget a hot, dry
hour in a healthy doze. The click of the chisel in the quarry ceases, the hoe is cast aside, the driver is lying on his face, fast
asleep, while the donkey nibbles and rolls his load-sore back deliciously in the dust. The camel sits like a salamander,
apparently minding no change of weather. Little birds pant for breath. All is very still and hot.

But work-time comes again before the heat goes, and the workmen half sit up, looking around, perhaps playfully tossing

a stick or clod on the head of a lazier comrade. The work-saddles are roped on the backs of the animals. The camel, long
habituated to complaining, whether made to kneel or rise again, utters grating gutturals from his long throat. He is the
Oriental striker, objecting, vocally, at least, to every new demand upon him. Well waked, the countryside begins to be
busy again and work goes on until sundown. As the afternoon slips into the evening you will see traveling peasants
hastening to make their villages. The hills are touched with pinks and purples that shade into dark blue. The gray owl calls,
the foxes reconnoiter the fields, the village dogs bark, lights straggle out from the settlements. One may hear the song of a
watcher in a vineyard or the bang of his musket as he shoots at a dog or fox meddling with the vines. As we hastened one
evening through a village two hours distance from our own, the people, sitting about the doors and in the alleys, seemed
astonished and urged us to stop overnight, not understanding our preference to travel on in the growing dusk. But we went
on, passing possible sites for Ai, then Bethel and Beeroth, and so to our own Râm Allâh. The way was precarious and
stony, with only the starlight to help us, and the evening was chilly.

We might call Palestine, even the western part of it, which is more familiar to us, a world in little, so much has been

packed into this little space between the Jordan and the Mediterranean. Sometimes it has been a kingdom and sometimes
kingdoms. As a province or provinces it has acknowledged masters on the south, east, north and west.

Far back in time the country was the range of numerous unruly tribes. To-day it contains several districts within the

Asiatic holdings of the Turkish Empire. As one looks inland from the Mediterranean on the Judean country, first comes the
straight unindented coast line of sand, then a fertile strip of land parallel to it in which the orange and the grains flourish.
Next comes the secondary ridge of Judean hills; then its primary ridge of mountains. These latter are thirty-five miles from
the sea and three fifths of a mile above its level. Now, as we stand on the mountain range, we have only twenty miles
between us and the country of the Dead Sea, but a rapid fall in levels which, in so short a distance, makes the sand-hills
seem to drop down and away from us in a precipitous stairway to one of the lowest spots on earth, the basin in which the
Jordan River and the Dead Sea lie, the so-called Ghôr. This depression is a quarter of a mile below sea-level and hence
three quarters of a mile below the high country in the neighborhood of Jerusalem.

Western Palestine is a limestone country that is, geologically speaking, new. Faulting, erosion and earthquake as well

have been hard at work in comparatively recent geological times to make a most diversified surface in a land of short
distances. Its rocks are peppered with nodules of flint. The weather wear on the country rocks of some districts allows the
flint nodules to drop out, thus leaving a peculiar worm-eaten look in the stones and cliffs. In other localities the cherty
material runs in ribbon-like bands within the limestone. The lime rock is often beautified by geode-like recesses of lime
crystal, and the slabs of lamellar stone so much used for flooring, window-seats and roofing are frequently penciled with
exquisite dendritic markings. Often the face of cleavage between blocks of building material is glazed with a native pink.
There are a few houses in the villages whose external walls are constructed of regular blocks so arranged as to alternate in
a manner resembling checkerwork of pink and white squares.

One thought that may occur to an American or European as he looks at the numerous hills and mountains up and down

the middle and back of Western Palestine is that never before has he had such a fine opportunity to see the shapes of hills
and valleys. For at home he seldom sees the whole, real shape of a hill or a mountain, so covered is it with trees or smaller
growth. But here there is very little clothing on the hills. Their knobs and shoulders, cliffs and ribs, are almost as naked of
trees as the blue skies above them. The rock layers stand out at the worn edges very plainly. Some hills are banded round
and round horizontally with successive layers of rock. Others are made up of layers slightly inclined, and some look like

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giant clam-shells set down on the land. In yet other hills the twistings and heavings have given the sedimentary layers a
vertical position up and down over the mountains, as if they had been tipped over. These bands of rock are usually of
limestone interspersed with chunks of chert. Ordinarily the tops of the hills assume a long, sloping, rounded shape because
of the soft nature of the rock and the wearing power of the deluging rains.

All around the highland country of Western Palestine are mellow plains and fertile valleys. Up and down the western

border between the highlands and the Mediterranean is the Maritime Plain, from eight to fifteen miles wide. Along the
eastern edge is the great depression of the Ghôr, the low fertile basin that separates Western from Eastern Palestine and
provides a bed for the plunging current of the Jordan and a sink for the Dead Sea. These two fertile strips are barely
connected toward the north by an arm of the Ghôr, formerly called the Valley of Jezreel, that reaches to the site of ancient
Jezreel, and a succession of plains formerly called the Plain of Esdraelon, that touch the Maritime Plain around the nose of
Carmel. The highland country is pierced by many a cut called, in the language of the country, wâd, or wâdy, the equivalent
ordinarily of our valley, though the climate of Palestine is such as to make it almost always the case that a wâdy is a brook
in the rainy weather of winter and a dry gully during the rest of the year.[2] Some of these wâdys are of considerable
breadth and offer arable lands; others are narrow, deep gorges. Into some of these gorges the débris from the hillsides has
tumbled so as to make it impossible to use the valley bed as a road even in dry weather.

Many of the passes mentioned in the literature of Palestine are really highland paths. Valleys must often be avoided as

impassable during the winter rains and as stiflingly hot in summer. Invading armies would seldom risk using narrow valleys
for their approach, as they would be easily assailable from the hillsides.

The limestone is full of holes and caves varying in size from a pocket to a palace. The caves may be near the surface or

far in the secret places of the deep-chested mountains. They make reservoirs for the catching of the rain from the surface
and hold it through the long dry season, giving some of it in springs[3] and probably losing floods of it in lower and lower
caverns. Sometimes the caves are like small rooms,[4] let into the sides of the cliffs, as at ‛Ayn Fâra in the Wâdy Fâra, a
few hours northeast of Jerusalem, where there is a suite of four connecting rooms in the side wall of the valley, thirty feet
above the path. In front of the rooms is a narrow ledge overhanging the path, and up through this natural platform is a
manhole which offers the one way of access from below. All up and down this wâdy are caves, some having been
improved, probably for purposes of hermit dwelling. In Wâdy es-Suwaynîṭ, that is, the valley of Michmash, there are a
good many such cliff dwellings[5] which seem to be approachable only by a rope let down from the top of the precipice
above. All through the wild gorges of the country one is apt to come upon these caves with signs of use in some previous
age by troglodytes and hermits. When possible they are now used as goat-pens, and thus offer unclean but dry quarters to
any one caught in a rain. At the cave near Kharayṭûn the entrance is difficult to reach, up in the side of a precipitous
mountain. It is a narrow passage leading to a large, high, vaulted room, a sort of natural cathedral, with a large side
chamber. Thence one may go through a low, tortuous passage to other smaller rooms as far as most of the adventurous
care to go, the natives say to Hebron, but the guide-books, something over five hundred feet. About Jeba‛, east of er-
Râm, the ground sounds hollow under foot because of caves to which one may descend, in some cases by cut stairs, to
find that the caves have been enlarged and cemented. About two thirds of the way from el-Bîreh to Baytîn, on the left of
the path, is a cave which has been made to do service as a catch-basin for the water from the spring above. The mouth of
the spring has been enlarged artificially and connected by a rock-cut channel with the cave. This channel has little grooves
branching from it and there seem to be here the conveniences of an ancient laundering or fulling place. In the cave are two
supporting columns cut from the rock. The interior is well adorned to-day with a pretty growth of delicate maidenhair
ferns.

There are many caves in the hillsides of what is called the Samson Country,[6] through which the railway from Jaffa to

Jerusalem passes. In and about Jerusalem are caves the discussion of which does not belong here, though they can hardly
have failed, in their long association with the history of that city, of having much significant connection with the political and
religious history of the people of the country. Such are the caves about the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the little one
under the great rock beneath the Dome of the Rock, the artificially enlarged caves on the south side of the Valley of
Hinnom, the huge cave of Jeremiah, north of the city, under the hill where the Moslems have a cemetery, not to mention its
counterpart across the road and under the city, called Solomon’s Quarry or the Cotton Grotto.

Near the village of Ḳubâb, but nearer the tiny village of Abu Shûsheh, is a large cave now used as a sheep and goat

pen. It is called by the neighboring Moslems Noah’s Cave. The top of it has evidently at some time fallen in, thus
diminishing its size, but giving it an immense mouth, quite conspicuous all about the neighboring country to the north. The
peasantry, in their double desire to account for it and also to say something against the Jews, tell this story about the cave.
They say that Noah was making war against the Jews who, being hard pressed, ran into this cave for shelter. Thereupon
Noah brought up his heavy guns and bombarded the cave with such effect as to crush in the top, which fell on the Jews,
killing them all.

In connection with caves the peasants tell certain stories of hyenas. To the peasant any story that has to do with these

creatures is gruesome. The hyena, they say, will accost a lone pedestrian, rub up against him and cast a spell over him until,
in a dazed way, the man follows the animal to its cave, where the hyena will despatch him. The tale is continued to describe
how the hyena is captured. They say that a man strips himself naked and crawls into the cave of the hyena, carrying one
end of a rope which is held by his companions outside. Once inside, his condition deceives the hyena, as does also a
cajoling tone which he uses until the creature, quite unsuspecting, begins to fawn and roll over. The man at once secures a
leg of the hyena with his rope, whereupon the men outside draw out the beast and kill it with their clubs.

New graves are usually loaded with heavy stones and watched at night to prevent the hyenas from exhuming the dead

bodies.

As the rock of the country is of a quickly dissolving kind, the torrential force of the winter rains greatly facilitates soil-

making. The ground is strewn with loose stones, in some places so thickly that the soil cannot be seen a few rods away.

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Soil is carried rapidly about, so that where there are no terraces or pockets to catch it the shelving rock is soon denuded
and the only deep earth is found in the valleys or hollow plains.

The Jordan and the ‛Aujâ (Crooked) are the two largest rivers of Palestine; Ḥûleh (Merom), Tiberias (Galilee) and

Baḥret Lût (the Dead Sea), its three lakes. There are many streams, brooks and winter ponds that disappear with the rainy
season. In a few deep-cut beds, where strong springs supply the brooks, water flows in a current all the year.

The watershed of Western Palestine is considerably nearer to the Jordan than to the Mediterranean, being about thirty-

five or forty miles from the Sea, but scarcely more than twenty miles on the average from the river. The valley courses of
the streams generally take a southeasterly direction from the watershed to the Jordan basin, and a northwesterly direction
towards the Mediterranean Sea. Those on the east are narrower and more precipitous, since they have on that side of the
country the shorter distance and the more remarkable fall in levels.

Fertility and population have generally favored the western side of the watershed, with some notable exceptions. This

western slope is flanked by the low-lying hills of the Shephelah and comes gradually down to the Maritime Plain. The hills
and plain on this side have very great historical interest and have formed the bridge of the civilizations to the north and to
the south of Palestine. At the present time, when travel comes by sea from the Western world, this country is a threshold to
the shrines and ancient sites of Syria and the East.

The only ponds in the country are the winter ponds called by the native name, balû‛a. These are formed by the winter

rains. They stand for about five months in low places, and then disappear until the next rainy season.[7] Robinson, in 1838,
passed by one of these on his way from el-Bîreh to Jifnâ. As his journey that way was on June 13, the pond was then dry.
But this same pond may now be seen every winter and spring full of water. The new carriage road cuts the eastern end of
it at a point a little over a mile north of el-Bîreh. Another of these ponds may be seen just under the village of Baytûnyeh,
towards Râm Allâh. Were it not for such short-lived ponds many of the country people would have little idea of any body
of water larger than a rainwater cistern. The Dead Sea may be seen from the high hills to the east of these ponds and the
Mediterranean from those to the west, but only a small proportion of the peasantry ever get to see either one of them. A
distant view gives the unexperienced no adequate notion of their size. People living in Jaffa, on the sea, have been known
to poke fun at the upland folk and bewilder them with yarns about the sea. One story that they impose on the credulous
countryman is that every night, at dark, a cover is put over the sea, as one would cover over a jar of water, or a bowl of
dough. One man, on reaching Jaffa late in the afternoon for his first visit, hastened down to the beach in order to see the
water before the cover should be put on for the night. Perhaps the best known winter ponds are in the extensive sunken
meadows of the Plain of Esdraelon, athwart the way from Jenîn to Nazareth.

The springs of Palestine are its eyes, as the Arabs put it, and when they are sparkling with life the whole face of the

country lights up with a wholesome expression.[8] In places where the springs are remote from the present settlements, and
now used only for the flocks or by travelers, there are often to be seen remains of former buildings. Sometimes villas or
even villages may be traced; old aqueducts also, and ruined reservoirs, showing how great pains were once taken to utilize
the water supply. At ‛Ayn Fâra is a copious supply of water forming one of the few perennial brooks. In its deeper pools
the herdsmen water and wash their flocks.[9] There is a very feeble attempt at gardening in the vicinity, but for the most part
the precious treasure flows away unused. The valley sides show ancient masonry belonging to more thrifty times. On the
hill ‛Aṭâra, a mile south of el-Bîreh, are ruined reservoirs to which the waters of the spring now called ‛Ayn en-Nuṣbeh
were carried by stone conduits, of which only small pieces remain. So may similar indications be seen at ‛Ayn Ṣôba, at
‛Ayn Jeriyût, ‛Ayn Kefrîyeh, all of which are west of Râm Allâh. Present-day villages are often a considerable distance
from the spring on which they depend for drinking water. Many large places are provided with but one spring. Nazareth
and Jerusalem are thus limited to one good spring each. Around the Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea are warm, even hot,
springs once much prized as watering-places. They are generally sulphurous in character. Those at Tiberias, on the Sea of
Galilee, are used now as baths.

RIVER AUJA NORTH OF JAFFA

Of wells Palestine has but few. Some of those mentioned in the Bible still remain, though not all are in use.[10] It comes

more naturally to the mind of an Oriental to devote the labor and expense that it would take to dig a well to the
construction of something in which to catch a portion of the rainfall. It is quite essential to the prosperity of Palestine that its
water resources be husbanded through the long dry season.[11] As has been suggested, there is plenty of evidence that
formerly this was done in a very painstaking manner, but at the present time far less care is given to this very important
matter. Numerous cisterns and reservoirs were made to catch rain-water and the overflow of the fountains. The large
number of these ancient devices for saving water, in contrast with the few made and used in these days, offers one basis
for a comparison of the condition of the country in old and new Palestine. Rain-water was caught in cemented pits not very
unlike huge pear-shaped bottles. Such water was used for all household purposes where spring water failed; also for
watering the animals. It was drawn up as from a well. Occasionally these old cemented cisterns are still in use. But all
through the country there are vast numbers of them that are no longer used. All about Jerusalem, especially north of the
city, among the olives, they may be seen; also about the district of Râm Allâh, at Teḳû‛a and at Jânyeh.

The overflow of springs was provided for by more pretentious structures,—the great rectangular box pools built of solid

masonry. The most noteworthy of these reservoirs are the so-called Pools of Solomon, three in number, south of
Bethlehem, by the road that leads to Hebron. These three immense reservoirs, each of which, when full, would float a
battleship, have a combined capacity of over forty million gallons. Formerly stone aqueducts conveyed the waters to

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Jerusalem. Remains of these are still to be seen. The water is conveyed now through iron pipes, fully eight miles, to the city.
Jerusalem itself has the famous Pool of Siloam,[12] the Sultan’s Pool and the Pool of Mâmilla. The last one mentioned feeds
a large reservoir within the city walls, sometimes called the Patriarch’s Pool and sometimes Hezekiah’s Pool.[13] At Bethel
(Baytîn) the spring is surrounded by an old reservoir larger than the Pool of Mâmilla. It is now dry and its bottom is used
as a threshing-floor. And so all about the country are found the remains of costly works designed for the saving and proper
use of the water supply. With such means of irrigation the productiveness of the country must have been much greater than
at the present day.

Sometimes, in speaking of the seasons in Palestine, we say summer and winter,[14] and sometimes we mention the four

seasons. Perhaps if we should say wet season and dry season it would be less misleading, but even then one would have to
bear in mind that the wet season is not a time of general downpour but simply the season in which the rains of the year
come.

The wet season, or winter,[15] as it is more generally called, ought to provide, for the welfare of the country, from

twenty-five to thirty inches of rainfall in the highlands. Sometimes it is as low as sixteen inches, and it occasionally exceeds
thirty-five or even forty inches. Roughly speaking, the wet season claims the five months, November to March. In a very
wet winter, perhaps, the rains will reach over a period of nearly six months, but, on the other hand, the rainy period may
shrink to four. The most frequent and heavy falls of rain in an ordinary season are looked for near the beginning and at the
close of the wet season. Many pleasant days,[16] and even some entire weeks of rainless weather, may be expected during
this wet season. Now and then there may be a winter during which the water will be glazed over in the puddles a few
times, or there may be several falls of snow.[17] Driving, raw, chilling rains and winds may prevail for a week at a time, or
longer, and be less easy to bear than the stronger cold of a more northerly climate.[18]

The dry season is more in keeping with its name throughout its control of nearly seven months, although rain in May has

been experienced and a slip in one of the summer months is not unknown. At the end of September or at the beginning of
October a slight shower is expected. One scarcely expects rain, however, until well into November. Despite the very hot
days in the dry summer season, the nights in the Palestine highlands are generally cool. The Syrian sun is a synonym for
piercing, intense heat, and foreigners are more apt to be thoughtless of its power than to overdo caution. During the
midsummer months it is hard to take photographs except very early or very late, or with very slow-acting lenses and
plates. Then, too, the poorest light for distant views may be in summer, when the intense heat fills the air with a haze. Those
who have seen the dead, brown look that comes on a district of country which has suffered an unusual period of drought
may partly imagine the appearance of Palestine after a six months’ absence of rain unrelieved except for the night-mists that
may prevail during some of that time.

After the drought the peasant, like the country, is pantingly ready for the first rains of the autumn. He never hesitates to

choose between rain and sunshine. It is always the former. Even if rain comes in destructive abundance he has only to think
of the terrors of a scanty rainfall to repress all complaints. As we say in a complimentary way to a guest, “You have
brought pleasant weather,” so the Syrian will say, “Your foot is green,” that is, “Your coming is accompanied by the
benedictions of rain.” Rains usually begin with an appearance of reluctance,[19] but sometime in November or December
they ought to come down heavily for most of a fortnight. Sometimes there are several weeks of delightfully balmy weather
between the drenching rains. During an unusually dry winter, when the rainfall is below twenty inches, much of the winter
will be pleasant, at the expense of the crops and of the general welfare. At such times the price of wheat goes up and the
scantily supplied cisterns give no promise of holding out through the succeeding summer. Springs dry down until the best of
them offer but a tiny stream, and hours must be spent at some of the fountains to fill a few jars. Much of January is apt to
be rainy. February is strange and fickle, and because it is especially trying to the vital forces of the aged and weak is called
Old Woman’s Month. We remember a very pleasant February, but such are rare. Honest March is pretty much its
boisterous self even in Palestine. April is sunny and a charming month for a journey. If the latter rains have been delayed
they may come even in April, though that is late. But the needed rain has been known to come as late as middle May, with
unusually cold weather. Then the peasants deemed such weather portentous.[20] The latter rains—how familiar a phrase to
the ears of many who may not know just why they are so called![21] The downpour of November or December washed
out the ground, made the heat flee, brought back health to the succulent plants, hastened the ripening of the oranges and
did pretty well for the cisterns, but this latter rain is the key of the situation. If it does not come, wheat may sell at famine
prices and all the pains of a drought take hold of the land.[22] But if it only will come, then wealth and comfort and a healthy
summer.[23]

Harvest begins in the springtime. May brings the yellow heads on the grain, and it must be gathered or soon the summer

will be ended and the harvest past.[24] The grain on the hills is a few weeks later than that in the valleys and plains. A little
donkey coming in from the hill terraces with a back-load of sheaves looks very porcupiny. The reaper grasps the stalks of
wheat or barley with one hand and cuts a long straw with the sickle in the other hand. If he is hungry he starts a little fire
and holds some of the wheat heads over it until well parched, and then, rubbing off the husks between his palms, he has a
feast of the new corn of the land. Thus treated, new wheat is called frîky (rubbed).

During the time of ripening wheat one may see in the fields, close to the ground, the heavy green leaves and yellow,

shiny apples of the mandrake.[25] The natives say that if one eats the seeds of the fruit they will make him crazy. The pulp
has a pleasant, sweetish flavor and an agreeable smell.[26]

The only dreadful wind in Palestine is the east wind,[27] because it blows from the inland desert and brings excessive

heat. The Arabic word for east is sherḳ, and so for east wind the Arab says Sherḳ-îyeh. From this we get, by corruption,
our word sirocco (or sherokkoh), which has come to mean simply a hot, enervating blast from any direction. To the Arab
it is that wearing east wind whose coming can be felt in the early morning before a breath of air seems stirring. There is a
certain chemical effect on the nervous system of those who are particularly sensitive to the blighting touch of the Sherḳîyeh.
Sometimes this wind goes away suddenly after a short day, but almost always its coming means that it will run three days at

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least, and often more. There is a similar wind in Egypt known to residents of Cairo as the Khumsûn (fifty), from the
likelihood that it will remain fifty days. Such an unbroken period of hot winds must be exceedingly rare in Palestine, though
in the early autumn of 1902 there was an almost continuous Sherḳîyeh for five weeks. The east wind of winter is usually as
disagreeably cold as its relative in summer is hot and suffocating. The only good thing that I ever knew the summer sirocco
to do was to cure quickly the raisin grapes spread on the ground in September.

The west wind prevails a generous share of the time and brings mists and coolness from the sea during the summer. In

the rainy season a northwest wind brings rain.[28] The showers are often presaged by high winds from the west and north.

September, with its trying siroccos, is often hotter than May. The pomegranates ripen in this month. In the country

districts it is very hard to get goats’ milk from this time onward for several months. The flocks are too far distant, having
been driven away to find pasture and water, and a little later on the milk is all needed for the young. During these days,
too, it is not thought good to weaken the goats by milking them any more than is quite necessary. In the cities milk is
always to be had.

The Greek Feast of the Cross, about the end of September, is looked forward to as marking the date for an early

shower which may be sufficiently strong to cleanse the roofs. After that the rain may come in a month, or it may wait two.
The people notice a period of general unhealthiness just preceding the autumn rains. Their advent usually puts an end to it,
bringing healthier conditions. Sometime along in the autumn there is often noticed a warm spell of weather which the natives
call Ṣayf Ṣaghîr, or Ṣayf Rummân, that is, Little Summer, or Pomegranate Summer.

The cement in the paved roofs cracks under the fierce heat of summer and the early showers help to discover the bad

places which must be patched before the heavy winter rains. In the case of earth-covered roofs the first shower ought to
be followed by a good rolling, the owners going over and over them with stone rollers rigged with wooden handles that
creak out upon the clear air after the rain as they work in the sockets. From the peculiar noise thus made the Râm Allâh
people have a local name of zukzâkeh for the wooden handles of these stone rollers. In the northern part of the country
the name nâ‛uṣ is given to the roller handles for a similar reason. The roofs of rolled earth can be kept very tight. The
covering of such roofs is made by mixing sandy soil with clay and with the finest grade of chaff, called mûṣ, from the
threshing-floor. On old earth roofs patches of grass[29] grow, and even grain has been seen springing up in such places.

The Syrian peasant divides trees into classes by pairs. There are those that are good to sit under and those that are not.

Then there are those that yield food and those that do not. Finally there are those that are holy, and therefore cannot be cut
for charcoal or fuel, and those that are not thus tabooed.

The fig-tree is a very useful food producer and is much cultivated. As elsewhere mentioned, the irritating effect of the

juices of the broken fig branch or leaf makes it less desirable as a shade tree, but because of its dense shade it must be
resorted to in hot weather. The olive-tree gives rather a thin shade. The carob-tree is a fine shade-giver. The pine is a
favorite in this respect, though few pines are left. The needly cypress shades only its own central mast. One might as well
snuggle up to one’s own shadow for protection as to expect it from a cypress. Pomegranate, lemon and orange-trees,
when large enough, afford shade, but they are often in low, miasmatic places. The apple-tree does not do well except in
parts of northern Syria, as at Zebedâny, near Damascus. Some fine pear-trees are to be seen above Bîr ez-Zayt, though as
a rule they are as difficult to cultivate as apple-trees. At ‛Ayn Sînyâ are flourishing mulberry-trees of great size. The opinion
is held that the mulberry and the silk culture usually associated with it would thrive peculiarly well in Palestine. Mount
Tabor is thinly studded with trees except on the southeast side. Mount Carmel also has yet some remains of its one-time
forest. The oak is found in a number of varieties, but is a great temptation to the charcoal burner, as it affords the most
desirable coal. The zinzilakt is a favorite for shade. The best substitute for a shade tree in the land is a large rock, the cool
side of which helps one to forget the burning glare of the noon sun.[30]

We shall have to call winter the season of rain, flowers and travel. Rain ushers in the winter and also closes it. To the

middle and latter part of that season is due the bursting of the blossoms and a push that sends flowers scattering into the
first months of the dry season.[31] Travel might find a better time than much of the winter, but then it is cool and if it rains,
why, that is the way of the country, and this explanation often suffices.

DONKEY AT THE THRESHING FLOOR WITH A LOAD OF WHEAT

On the flowers of the country Dr. Post’s book offers a mine of information for those skilled enough in the elements of

botany to make use of it. The little booklets of pressed specimens offered for sale, when fresh, give an excellent idea of the
variety of wild-flower life in Palestine. Mrs. Hannah Zeller, a daughter of former Bishop Gobat of Jerusalem, and the wife
of the late Rev. John Zeller of Nazareth and Jerusalem, has been most successful in reproducing in color many of the
flowers of Palestine. Mrs. Zeller’s book of color plates, published some years ago, is now hard to secure. She still has the
originals and an even larger collection which awaits a publisher. Until some such publication in color is attempted it will be
difficult to describe in writing the unusual splendor and variety of Palestine’s wild flowers.

The flower season really begins in what we should call midautumn with the little lavender-colored crocus called by the

natives the serâj el-ghûleh or the lamp of the ghoul. A better name for it would be serâj esh-shugâ‛ which would mean
the lamp of courage, as it thrusts its dainty head up through the calcined earth, scarcely waiting for a drop of moisture.
After this brave little color-bearer of Flora’s troop there follow the narcissus, heavily sweet, and the cyclamen, clinging
with its ample bulb in rocky cracks as well as nestling in moist beds. But of all the flowers the general favorite is the wild
anemone, especially in its rarer varieties, white, pink, salmon, blue and purple. The most common is the red anemone,
which is seen everywhere and sometimes measures four or five inches across. Near Dayr Dîwân we once rode through an

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orchard where the ground was covered with a cloud of these red ones, so voluptuous, so prodigally spread in a carpet of
crimson beauty that one almost held one’s breath at the charming scene. The red ranunculus, which comes later, is almost
as large, but it looks thick and heavy in comparison, and the flaunting red poppy, which comes still later, looks weak and
characterless beside the anemone. Even the wild red tulip suffers beside it. The colors of the anemone other than red are
more rare, but usually come earlier. About Jaffa they appear shortly after Christmas. White ones and some of delicate
shades are found between there and the river ‛Aujâ. White ones abound near Jifnâ, and are found east of Ḳubâb and east
of Sejed station. Purple, pink and blue ones are plentiful in Wâdy el-Kelb and the Khullet el-‛Adas near Râm Allâh. The
large red ranunculus mentioned is found in large patches between Jericho and the Dead Sea in early February.
Considerably later there is an acre-patch east of Dayr Dîwân near the cliff descent towards eṭ-Ṭayyibeh. The red tulip is
rarer and follows soon. The red poppy is very abundant. It has the delicacy of crêpe. It is scarcely welcome as it betokens
the close of the flower season. But one may for some time yet gather flowers that blaze forth as brilliantly in middle spring
as do the autumn flowers in America: the adonis, gorse, flax, mustard, bachelor’s button, anise, vetch, everlasting, wild
mignonette and geranium. In the vineyards, about pruning time, the ground is covered with a rich purple glow. The sweet-
scented gorse abounds in the valleys towards Ṭayyibeh. The vetches come in many colors, and there are scores of other
scarcely noticed little blossoms.

When the season has been especially rainy, as may occur a...